The appearance of Coptic writing is closely related to the spread of Christianity in the II-III centuries. ad. The reason for the founding of the new written language was the need to translate the Bible.
Who are the Copts?
Coptic is a derivative of the word "Copts" (Egyptian Christians). The ancient Egyptians are considered the direct descendants of this people. The founder of the Coptic church (47-48 AD) is considered Mark the Evangelist. In the II century, Christianity was increasingly spread among the population of Egypt.
The history of the Coptic script
Believers needed religious literature that they could read and understand. The Bible at that time was written in Greek. The reason for the creation of the new script was the fact that the Egyptian language was limited to pronounce ritual conspiracies. There were no vowels in it, which made it difficult to reproduce the test. But the Greek language did not fit: it lacked some sounds inherent in Egyptian.
The history of Coptic writing began at the moment when the clerks had to combine the two scripts for a more consonant pronunciation of words. Then the mixed alphabet began to be used for translation. The Egyptians could understand the written text, which made it possible to distribute the Bible among the people in order to promote Christianity. Initially, this option was not used for communication in everyday life, it was used only in religious rituals, ceremonies.
So the Coptic alphabet was created - a letter that includes 24 letters of the West Greek uncial alphabet and 6-8 consonants of the Egyptian demotic language (depending on the dialect used). In total, 32 characters are written in it.
Coptic writing development
At the end of the III century. hieroglyphic writing was finally forgotten, after which from the 4th century AD Coptic writing is widespread. It has been used in daily communication for several centuries.
Interestingly, the year 284 is considered the beginning of the Coptic era. At that time, Egyptian territory was part of the Roman Empire. Emperor Diocletian ascended the throne, who ordered the oppression of believers.
In the V century. The Coptic Church was completely excommunicated from the family of Christian churches. The reason for this was a disagreement about the nature of Jesus Christ. The Christian Church accepted the dogma that Jesus is both a god and a man. The Copts claimed that he has only a divine essence. Separation from Christianity and isolation of the Coptic church allowed to preserve the uniqueness of the culture of the people.
Gradually, after the Arabs conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt in 640 and included them in the Caliphate, the language began to disappear. In the country, instead of it, Arabic script was introduced and used , which almost completely replaced the Coptic letter. Despite this, in Egypt it existed until the fourteenth century, but was used only in church life. Today, followers of the Coptic Church, which account for about 8% of the population, still use this type of writing to reprint religious texts.
The first archaeological finds
Coptic writing was first discovered back in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Bonaparte participated in an expedition to Egypt. In 1799, near the city of Rosetta, his detachment built fortifications. One of the officers, Bouchard, noticed a wall covered with ancient text that belonged to a ruined Arab fort (a closed fortification that is part of the fortress). The inscription was written with mixed symbols of the ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek alphabets. Later, scientists correlated the carved text with the end of the 1st century, more specifically, the year 196.
The Greek part of the text was easily translated. But it was much more difficult to translate the hieroglyphs similar to the Copts letter. The Coptic letter, as suggested by the learned Champollion, really turned out to be the key to reading the hieroglyphs. After applying it for decryption, scientists were able to translate the entire inscription completely.
Types of Coptic
Egyptian writing was divided into the Old Coptic alphabet (refers to the III century BC) and the Coptic (originated in the II century).
Starokopstkaya is an unapproved version that appeared as a result of the first attempts to rewrite the Egyptian text into Greek, adding to it the missing sounds that were taken from the ancient Egyptian alphabet. Staroptic writing gradually developed.
A later - Coptic letter - is used by the followers of this church today. In addition, the list of the number of alphabets available for typing on a computer includes Coptic characters (Unicode, version 4.1).
Letter spelling
In Russian, we are used to seeing pairs of uppercase and lowercase printed characters the same. The difference is only in the pair Aa. There is a similar situation in Coptic writing. Almost all lowercase letters repeat the spelling, except for one single pair: Ϧ - ϧ.
Given the existence of dialects in Egypt, the writing of the text was also slightly different. Some schools used the apostrophe; for others, it was mandatory to write a shiver (looks like “/”) and a capital Y.
The first attempts of the ancient Egyptians to create a more consonant alphabet were made back in the 3rd century. BC. But the final version of the Coptic letter was ready only for the II century. In Egypt, it became widespread with Christianity, until the Coptic script was replaced by Arabic. Then Coptic writing disappeared from daily use, but continued to be used in church ceremonies and has survived to our time.